zombiedog

I always mix Dax and Invasive Procedures up.

Those screenshots do look like more of an improvement and seem to have less of the AI artefacts than The Emissary had. I look forward to watching the whole episode 😃

Leland Kovich said:

@zombiedog:

No worries, you didn’t sound disrespectful or dismissive - everything’s good.

And I totally understand what you meant - many times in the past I thought about stopping or investing in the project, but I am to stubborn to stop 😉

Never stop being stubborn 😄

Leland Kovich said:

But I wouldn’t call it a “lost cause”, possible a “difficult task” - but I am persistent.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so dismissive or disrespectful to your work.

I am very interested to see what is produced and I appreciate the effort being put into this project. It does seem that the better results are going to come from the later seasons.

Thinking about it even the other episodes of season 1 and 2 might come out better because as memory serves the pilot always looked the worst out of everything.

Leland Kovich said:

zombiedog said:

Leland Kovich said:

Thanks for the advice. I have also noticed the upscaler still not being “consistent enough” - it can’t hold on to fine details, sometimes even in the close-ups. Still the best I could come up with so far.

I’ve not watched it yet but I have a feeling that seasons 1-3 are going to be harder to upscale than 4-7 because the source videos are lower quality on the 1-3 DVDs. I think they used higher quality tape to edit from season 4 on as there is a noticeable increase of quality from season 4 onwards.

Unfortunately that’s true. Watching the DVDs, you can see noticeable quality differences as follows: Seasons 1 & 2 are visually just bad (some more than others), season 3 is better, but still not good, a markable improvement is season 4 (image is sharper, more grain is present and details are clearer) and from season 5 onwoards it’s good DVD-quality.
I think the reason is that (if I remember correctly) they used tapes for seasons 1-2 and went digital around the time season 3 came along, switching over completely in season 4.
It’s similar with Voyager, the first digital models were used during season 3 (the first completely digitally rendered Voyager model was used in the episode “Unity” I believe).

I’m pretty sure they were all edited on tape, or at least the final edits were committed to a tape and even after the increase of image quality post season 4. I think the quality of tape they were recorded to had just improved.

I’ve had a look through the pilot and it’s a really great effort but I think that it’s kind of a lost cause for these early seasons to try and upscale them. Everything comes across as too smooth and in wide shots you can see that the AI algorithm is trying to draw faces on the characters. One thing that might help it a little, I know that Topaz has the option to add grain to the image. A small coating of grain might cover up these more obvious AI upscaling artifacts. I’m not saying give up, I’m just saying that the early seasons are probably not going to cope well with the upscale to 1080p. I’d be really interested to see what “The Way of the Warrior” were to come out like using the exact same method. I would bet that it comes out a lot better because the quality of the source is much higher.

Leland Kovich said:

Thanks for the advice. I have also noticed the upscaler still not being “consistent enough” - it can’t hold on to fine details, sometimes even in the close-ups. Still the best I could come up with so far.

I’ve not watched it yet but I have a feeling that seasons 1-3 are going to be harder to upscale than 4-7 because the source videos are lower quality on the 1-3 DVDs. I think they used higher quality tape to edit from season 4 on as there is a noticeable increase of quality from season 4 onwards.

This is great. I can’t wait to be able to access the videos.

Hey, I’ve just started using Topaz to upscale 21 Jump Street into 1080p. It’s a slow process because my laptop isn’t super high spec. But I’m planning on getting a new desktop in the next few months which should hopefully speed it up. I’ve done some previews which look promising. Unfortunately the processing of a full episode seems to be too much for my laptop and it errors on me quite a bit. The 30 second previews I’ve been looking at look pretty good though so far. I’ll keep you updated of any progress.

Black Alert said:

@gawain.1138:

Sorry, a lot to do at the moment. Still adjusting stuff.

I think I speak for a lot of us who are sitting here with baited breath. I cannot wait to be able to view the whole remastered series that you’ve done/are doing. The initial pics look amazing.

Black Alert said:

@gawain.1138:

Sorry, a lot to do at the moment. Still adjusting stuff.

I think I speak for a lot of us who are sitting here with baited breath. I cannot wait to be able to view the whole remastered series that you’ve done/are doing. The initial pics look amazing.

Black Alert said:

@gawain.1138:

Sorry, a lot to do at the moment. Still adjusting stuff.

I think I speak for a lot of us who are sitting here with baited breath. I cannot wait to be able to view the whole remastered series that you’ve done/are doing. The initial pics look amazing.

Black Alert said:

@gawain.1138:

Sorry, a lot to do at the moment. Still adjusting stuff.

I think I speak for a lot of us who are sitting here with baited breath. I cannot wait to be able to view the whole remastered series that you’ve done/are doing. The initial pics look amazing.

Black Alert said:

@gawain.1138:

Sorry, a lot to do at the moment. Still adjusting stuff.

I think I speak for a lot of us who are sitting here with baited breath. I cannot wait to be able to view the whole remastered series that you’ve done/are doing. The initial pics look amazing.

Black Alert said:

@zombiedog:

Yeah, I know. I am still at it. But I had a long period recovering from severe Covid, so it wasn’t exactly easy to continue.
But I will be back, don’t worry.

I’m sorry to hear that 😦 I hope you’re doing a lot better now 😃

Black Alert said:

Hey guys - got a sneak peek of things to come (results of my upgrades). More soon to follow:

https://imgsli.com/MTE1ODM3
https://imgsli.com/MTE1ODM4

Have fun!

I think I speak for many people here when we say we cannot wait to get our hands on the full restored series!!! 😄